[SOLVED] Deleted old drive with windows, and ruined boot

[yomamaisonfier]

So I recently finally got an SSD. Happy quick boots! I painstakingly took days to set everything up, install all my programs, and copy any maybe-important information over to the new drive. I am now ready to use the old drive as just simply storage. So I go through, and completely wipe the old drive, and put whatever I want on it. However, after that, my computer refused to boot. I was scratching my head for hours trying to figure out what went wrong, and tried all the windows-available repair choices I could, even using the CMD to try and repair, none of it worked "install windows again" everyone said. I am NOT going through those days installing all those programs again.

So I found out, apparently, you know how Windows creates those partitions? recovery, boot, system, partitions? Yeah, apparently during the install onto the new SSD, Windows decided to just not include any of that. My windows installation is one single partition, I guess because I installed windows with another windows installation already in my computer. (man I wish they said that when you go to install. Seems like some pretty important info after all) Here is a screenshot of my current SSD with windows installed on it, from disk manager:

And here is a screenshot of my old drive, with windows now installed back on it:

So. I was forced to delete all the stuff I put on my old drive for storage (thankfully nothing too important) and install windows BACK onto that drive, just so I can boot into THIS drive again. I doubt there's a way, but... Is there a way to add those partitions to my new windows installation? Or do I actually have to completely reinstall windows in order for it to properly add the partitions? Am I SOL? Am I really gonna need to carry around two drives for one windows installation?

 

[faalin]

The issue was you left the old drive plugged in when doing a fresh install on the SSD

Since during the install windows saw that there was already a copy of windows installed with the boot loader partition it used that instead of making a fresh one on the SSD. It is always recommend to unplug all drives from the computer when doing a fresh install.


You can give this a try to recreate the boot loader

You can create a lost/deleted EFI partition by CMD.

1. Create an installation media
2. Boot PC with an installation media
3. Press SHFIT + F10 on the first screen to bring up Command Prompt
4. Run the following commands and click Enter each time at Command Prompt:

diskpart
list disk
select disk N (N refers to the disk which contains the deleted the EFI System partition)
list partition
create partition efi
format quick fs=fat32
list partition
list volume (find the volume letter which belongs to the installed Windows OS)
exit (exit diskpart)
bcdboot M:\windows (M refers to the volume letter of installed Windows OS)

(bcdboot m:\windows command will copy the boot files from Windows partition to the EFI system partition and create BCD store in the partition)

Next remove installation drive and restart your computer


If you cant recreate the boot loader partition then your only option is to do a reinstall

 

[yomamaisonfier]

"It is always recommend to unplug all drives from the computer when doing a fresh install."

Why can't windows just treat every drive it's installed on to as a full fat new windows installation? It shouldn't care that I have another windows drive. You'd think after decades of development Windows would add a setting and keep it defaultly on.

And I had already tried to repair the boot loader with those commands, one of the many threads I came across. Like I already posted, my new SSD is one single partition. There's no leftover storage for any boot partitions. I can't create anything in a non-existent partition.

 

[USAFRet]

"It is always recommend to unplug all drives from the computer when doing a fresh install."

Why can't windows just treat every drive it's installed on to as a full fat new windows installation? It shouldn't care that I have another windows drive. You'd think after decades of development Windows would add a setting and keep it defaultly on.

We all wish it would just do that.

There is no real technical reason why it cannot be so.
That is a conscious decision by the team that controls this.

 

[onespeedbiker]

What you need to is shrink you current partition enough to create a boot partition. This is the same as what faalin posted with a few more steps

Step 1. Boot your computer from a Windows installation disc or recovery disk. Press Shift+F10 in the setup to enter command prompt window.

Step 2. Run the commands below to shrink a partition to get unallocated space.

• Diskpart
• List disk
• Select disk X (X represents the disk number of the disk that needs an EFI partition)
• List partition
• Select partition N (N represents the partition number of the partition that needs shrinking)
• Shrink desired=500 (shrink the partition by 500MB)

Step 3. Then you can create EFI partition using unallocated space with the command below:

• create partition EFI size=200
• format quick fs=fat32 label="System"
• create partition msr size = 128

Step 4. After those two partitions have been successfully created, use the commands below to install boot loader and other applications needed.

• bootrec /fixboot
• bcdboot c:\Windows /s b: /f all

https://www.diskpart.com/windows-10/missing-efi-partition-windows-10.html